


with reverence to twenty-seven

by thermodynamicActivity (chlorinetrifluoride)



Series: The Collegestuck 'Verse [27]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol Withdrawal, Alternate Universe - High School, Dirk Bashing, Drug Abuse, F/F, F/M, Humanstuck, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Mental Health Issues, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Underage Drinking, Underage Drug Use, Underage Smoking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 08:13:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3112538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlorinetrifluoride/pseuds/thermodynamicActivity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're a musician. A swimmer. A friend. A writer. An upperclassman. A drug-abusing madman. That last thing more than everything else before it. When Fef finally has enough of your shit and leaves, you find a new best friend in Roxy Lalonde, who cares about you for reasons you'll never understand. You've known her since last year, and she's still around. The two of you sit across the street from school, passing joints back and forth and obsessing over introspective lyrics and members of the 27 Club. You find your way into substances heavier than weed. Your headshrinker diagnoses you with borderline something or another. Roxy tries to stay sober, or more sober than she's been, and get over her ancient crush on the asshole with the pointy sunglasses. The rest of the Harris crew - Dave, Vriska, Gamzee, and occasionally Jade - try to pull out decent grades for junior year. Moreover, Sollux Captor is surprisingly not an asshole on the inside, will wonders never cease? </p><p>Your name is Eridan Ampora, and you just don't fucking get this year, your penultimate year of high school.</p><p>High school era, pre-collegestuck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a kind of shooting star life

**Author's Note:**

> set in 2010, may possibly be extended into 2011 and senior year. either way, this takes place before the events of beta collegestuck.  
> somewhat roxy-centric, despite eridan's POV. dirk bashing because eridan can't stand dirk, and this is eridan's (somewhat) jaundiced account.  
> eridan and roxy might be a brotp i ship with a stronger intensity than porrim and mituna, i'm not sure.  
> mind all the warning tags you read before opening this. all that stuff is made very explicit in this story.  
> rated M because while there isn't any overt violence or semi-explicit sex in this, the sort of stuff eridan gets into, i think, warrants a rating higher than T. if you think i'm misplaced in rating it so highly, let me know, and i'll take it back down to T.
> 
> also, there are ships other than the ones listed (mostly dirkjake, arasol, and fefsol), but they don't feature as heavily in the plot, so i didn't tag them. onesided roxdirk is somewhat plot important, but i had no idea how to tag that.

_Late-February 2010_

After you get out of the hospital, after Roxy is finished her closet detoxing, after all the tumultuous events of early 2010 have gotten themselves out of the way, the two of you sit on Harris after school more often than not - at least when Roxy doesn’t have robotics - passing a joint and talking at length about your latest obsession, which is two members of the 27 club - Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.

Hendrix for you, because you can play the guitar with a astounding amount of competence for a useless rich white boy. That last bit was a direct quote from Vriska.

And Joplin for Roxy, because she’s a singer. Even if Roxy’s lyric soprano can’t exactly do justice to the way Joplin once handled herself in front of a microphone. Roxy can also play the cello, but nobody has seen this talent since freshman year, and she's far more focused on singing now.

So you learn the chords to _“All Is Loneliness”_ and listen to Roxy try to make her voice sound deeper and distressed by cigarette smoke.

The second part isn’t really that hard. All she has to do is chain smoke a couple of Dave’s Newports, which she does anyway. She hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol since the infamous events of the midwinter recess sobriety project, so now she’s traded one habit for another.

Vriska drinks her own bottle of spiked Snapple while Roxy watches her, pupils dilated, a cigarette between her fingertips. One she smokes in about a minute flat. And then a second. She turns away from Vriska, pointedly.

You play the first chord, and Roxy starts in. She still sounds too classically trained to hold a candle to Janis Joplin, but her singing is pleasant in its own right.

“ _loneliness come botherin’ ‘round my house…”_

Gamzee, with his somehow on-key bass-baritone, provides the background vocals, stoned as a motherfucker after communing with his bong.  

Dave, who can make his own music and says that this gives him "mad authority", insists all of you should start a band. He can be manager and rake in the dough.

Roxy shakes her head and laughs, swiping three of his cigarettes when his back is turned.

You love each and every one of your weirdo friends. So much.

Vris, the eternally rebellious. Gamz, the eternally stoned. Dave and Roxy, the eternally chain smoking duo. You'd walk through fire for them, without a second thought. 

Weeks pass.

You go home, and not that much happens, other than the occasional pesterchum conversation between you and Roxy, trading the latest details about these artists who all snuffed it at the age of 27. Always drawn to mysterious explanations, you insist that they died because they found something out, something fundamental about the universe, and after learning those things, they could live no longer amongst regular people. Dying was the next step.

Roxy insists that their passing was all coincidence, though coincidences interesting to contemplate. She says you're glamorizing everything too much.

"Oh come on, Rox," you tell her one afternoon in your own defense. "I'm not the one who created that whole 'live fast, die young' thing. Shit didn't start with me."

"I guess," she replies, in a way that tells you she still doesn't wholly approve of what you think.

Yeah, well. Maybe you glamorize it a little, but she does too. It's hard not to glamorize that kind of shooting-star life. Way more interesting than this shit-pile existence, certainly.

You'd drop at twenty-seven if you'd done something totally worthwhile and badass before then. Shit, you'd drop at seventeen, which you turned a month ago, with those same caveats.

You can't help but wonder how it feels to live like a comet.

You could approximate it, in certain ways, though all of it would fall under the umbrella of "terrible ideas".

And the thing with your bad ideas is that there's never really any warning beforehand. One minute you're thinking benign thoughts, and the next, you've got it in your head that you're gonna do something really dumb but somehow make it awesome. They spontaneously generate with awful serendipity, and your impulse control is patchy at best, nonexistent at worse (usually).

So one day, you wake up for school but, instead of getting dressed, you end up making your way through Cronus’s drug stash until you find a syringe, a bag of H, a bag of coke, a spoon, and something to tie off with.

You have tied off his tourniquet enough times to know how this works, even if you won't have assistance the way he used to. And your CV, as Jade, the pre-med and the genius calls it (apparently it stands for cephalic vein), stands out on your pale forearm like a beacon. After cooking up the goods, you shoot a small amount of both substances. because you’re actually not trying to die. Maybe it's a speedsemicircle as opposed to a real speedball.

An hour later, for the first time since you imploded, you have a pleasant conversation with Feferi on the bus that morning, mostly because you’re higher than God himself.

_March 2010_

You have 7th free, and Roxy’s cutting the second half of the Psiioniic’s AP Physics B class, and you’re both on Harris, and you’re trying to master at least half the chords to “If 6 was 9” before both of you go to the Disciple’s AP Comp class next period.

It’s your favorite Hendrix song, if only for the single line that goes,  _"I’m the one that’s gotta die when it’s time for me to die. So let me live my life the way I want to."_

You intone it as smooth as you can for a white boy, and Roxy acts like she hasn’t had more than a sip of Vriska’s Snapple today, like her red-cheeked, affirming  _"amen"_  is one of complete sobriety. 

You dig around in your bag until you find the empty insulin needle, showing it to Roxy with the same swagger that you displayed when you played “Poison Oak” for Feferi, or even way back to the day you first figured out chord progressions, and the only person who gave a fuck was a thoroughly plastered and far too enthusiastic Cronus. You pretended like he was actually listening.

So now it's as if you’re showing her a magic trick, something special from one neglected kid (you) to another (Roxy), _"look what I can do!"_

Still a little strung out and made low, the lyrics to one more song pop into your head - " _i can ride my bike with no handlebars, no handlebars, no handlebars…"_

"I don’t got track marks or nothin," you tell her.

And you don’t understand the pure, unadulterated fear in her eyes at the sight of the needle, no, not at all. 

"Did you really shoot up this morning?" She asks, sounding less like the Roxy you know and more like a hazy memory of your mother, all full of concern where there should be the awe you expected.

"Uh… yeah."

She takes your hand, all gentle-like. “Are you suicidal again?”

You shake your head, honestly.

"I just thought," you say, "cause of the 27 club and all, that I’d try doin' a speedball and see what all the fuss was about. Cronus had alla the shit laying around."

Pierced by Roxy's wide stare, you feel guilty as fuck, so you’re gonna shift the culpability elsewhere. Cronus is always culpable. He’s at least half responsible for all the fucked up shit you think of. Roxy shakes her head at your meager justification. 

"But they all overdosed and  _died,_ Eri, that’s the point.”

She lights her cigarette with a shaky hand, and you need her to not worry now, ‘cause that’s the last thing you ever wanna do with your life, worry one of the few people who still cares about you unconditionally.

"I’m  _smarter_ than them,” you reply. “See, I ain’t dead. Betcha I could do this for ages and never die.”

Roxy drops her cigarette and nearly singes a hole in her stockings before she can collect herself enough to pick it back up.

"I don’t want to see it, Eridan," she tells you. "Please don't?"

Deflated, you cap the needle and put it away.

"I was just sayin’, Rox, don’t get like that with me." You hug her gently from behind, careful not to get burned by her quivering Newport. "C’mon, I’m fine, swear. Don’t worry about me, okay?"

She turns in your arms so she’s facing you, so you’re eye to eye, and you’re terrified for a second that she’s going to kiss you like she’s kissed Jade or Callie when she thought nobody was looking. But that’s not it at all. She plants a peck on your forehead and rolls her eyes.

"I worry about all my friends. Particularly the speedballin’ ones, christ almighty Eriderp, how the fuck’re you gonna make it to graduation at this rate?"

You decide, on the edge of your drug-induced afterglow, to put your head in Roxy's lap so she can play with your hair. This usually chills her out.

"I’ll find a way, my dear lady," you say softly, like some dude out of Shakespeare, and that gets her to crack a smile. Finally. "I always do."

_Mid-March to April 2010_

You try not to do hard drugs as often, because of how she feels about it. And maybe, just a little, because you don't want to be beholden to anything that way. You don't want to be like your brother. You don't want to fly through school in a drugged-out haze.

Withdrawal sucks, but Roxy has survived worse on that front, so you can endure this much. Vris continues drinking like it's going out of style, but if she goes through bad withdrawals on the off season, you never find out about them. And you haven't known her to try anything harder.

She probably would if you offered it, but that isn't your style. You don't like dragging people into the abyss after you.

27 loses much of its allure, after you become acutely aware of the rift that line of thought threatens to drive between you and Roxy, though not all of it. 

You watch Captor and Fef make out in the hall and resist the urge to jack a scalpel from the AP Bio lab for the purpose of carving your feelings into your upper thighs. Then you fail on that front of resistance. 

Go the the bathroom during English and count out seventeen bloody lines, one for each year of your godforsaken life. Eight on the left thigh and nine on the right.

Roxy would want to help you beat this little addiction if she knew, but you don't want her to to know; you don't want her to worry.

You like it best when she's unencumbered and singing, flirting with Jade on the odd occasion, and not looking at you like she's afraid you'll disappear one day. Granted, you don't have a great track record regarding that, but you have no intentions of disappearing now. Too many people actually like you as a human being. Knowing this constitutes a disquiet that fills you with warm fuzzies.

Sometimes, though, you feel too much at once, too many emotions, and you have to let them out somehow. Sure, with English grades that have never sunk below 95, you could probably write everything out in a poem, or in a poetic cycle if a single one wouldn't suffice. You used to pen and dedicate Petrarchan sonnets to Fef, a billion years ago, so the ability is there.

It wouldn't be the same as this, though, the raw instant gratification of seeing blood. 

One day you'll stop. One day you'll take your therapist up on her suggestion and write whenever your fingers itch for a blade.

But not today.

After detention, you sit on the stairs leading up to Harris Field, playing all of the _"I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning"_ album on your crummy little acoustic thing. Roxy finds you when robotics lets out, and she joins in with that unmistakable voice of hers while you pluck away the notes to  _"Road to Joy",_ foot tapping the concrete of the step two below where you sit.

_"..and no one's sure how all of this got started, but we're gonna make it goddamn certain how it's gonna end..."_

Roxy, she likes Bright Eyes for how self-reflective their lyrics are.

You like Bright Eyes because Fef liked Bright Eyes, although you guess you also like the way they arrange their songs.

It becomes a routine into April, this sitting in the grass after school and playing through that one favorite album until the late bus comes for you, and Dirk comes to collect Roxy. 

Occasionally, Dave, Vris, and Gamz sit and watch. Dirk does not approve of any of these friends, Roxy tells you. You have about as much regard for Dirk's opinions as you do for the moss growing on the bottom of the giant rock in your backyard.

Roxy is still very clearly not over him, despite her best efforts, although her affection doesn't wholly lie with him anymore.

Jade Harley comes to watch Roxy sing once a week or so.  

When Roxy doesn't show for one of your impromptu jamming sessions, you find her upstairs in one of the music rooms, singing _"Come Together"_   while Jade plays bass. 

Jade... is pretty mean at playing the bass guitar, you have to give her that. _Holy goddamn._

She and Roxy gaze at each other with a level of intimacy that wouldn't be out of place in a bedroom, and suddenly you feel like an intruder, witnessing this moment. You return to your place on the grass.

"Where's Roxy?" Dave asks, when he sees you walking up.

"With Jade."

For this tidbit, he's got one of the usual perverted Strider grins.

That night, as you sit on the bus, your mind runs unbidden through one of its usual horrifying "what-if" scenarios.

_What if Rox and Jade become like Fef and Captor? What if, after all the chips fall, you end up losing your best friend again?_

Even though you're a guitarist and not a lyricist, you think of yet another song lyric to describe your situation:  _"everyone I know goes away, in the end..."_

You manage to pull yourself out of that hole before you dig it too deep, though.

Roxy was never yours. No one is ever yours.

You think of her misery, and know in your heart that she deserves so much more than all that she's been dealt in this life. Roxy is so much more than most people give her credit for. She deserves unconditional love, and not in a way that you can give. She deserves Jade, the pretty girl with the box braids, the dark skin, and eyes that shine green as a stoplight.

And if it means you don't spend as much, or even any time with her, then so be it. You want her to be happy. You want her to stare fondly at Jade and sing without any self-conscious or melancholic reserve. Maybe this is your progress, eight weeks after your discharge from the psychiatric ward. These steps towards loving someone freely instead of possessively.

You don't want to make the same mistakes a second time.

To truly love someone is to wish for their happiness above all, perhaps.

You ask Roxy how things are going with Jade, and she tells you how they were up half of last night talking about science. 

Whatever floats their boats.

The next afternoon, Jade's studying late for AP Bio, so Roxy's with you, and you're playing _"Road to Joy"_ again. Standing beside you, she sings the last line of the first verse with a broad grin on her face, doing a little jaunty dance with Gamzee.

_"...I'm wide awake, it's morning..."_


	2. 76.47, 2150, 301.83, to number you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's the last month before ap exams start, and everyone's going a little crazy.  
> everyone who wasn't already a little crazy, anyway.  
> more Dirk-hate from Eridan, along with biblical allusions, test scores, and DSM criteria.  
> finally, a surprising detente on Sollux's part.  
> (i'm halfway done with this fic!)

  _April, 2 to 30, 2010_

In the morning before 1st period, instead of walking Roxy to AP Chem, the both of you are in the computer lab in room 109, on the unholy college board website, checking scores for last month’s administration of the Suck Ass Test, which apparently came out today. Pretty much everyone you know in your grade is scrambling to find a computer with which to check their scores.

You swaggering upperclassmen, you world-weary juniors, like to pretend that you’re human, but ultimately you’re nothing more than the intersections of a bunch of future-determining numbers. All of you know it.

 _We hold these truths to be self-evident, that we were only ever points on goddamn scattergrams in Naviance_ , you reflect bitterly.

After logging out of the computer next to Roxy’s, Dave gets up, flashes everyone in here the double bird, and struts out of the room like he’s been shortlisted for a Nobel Prize.

“1940, bitches,” he says triumphantly. “Suck it.”

“I’d be ashamed if I got that low,” Dirk mutters from across the room once the other Strider is gone.

You glare at in his general direction for no good reason. Yes, you’d been thinking the same thing, but you dislike Dirk Strider on principle. Far more than you dislike Captor, several orders of magnitude more. Oddly enough, Captor’s bony ass is nowhere to be found, although both of his girlfriends are here, trying to find out their fates.

Focusing on your screen again, you enter the password for your account, and prepare to face the music.

 _“Please let it be higher than Dave’s, please let it be higher than Dave’s, please let it be higher than Dave’s…”_   you think.

 _Ampora, Eridan  
_ _2150: 790 CR, 590 M, 770 WR_

“Pretty good, Eri,” Roxy laughs, leaning over so she can see your computer screen and grinning all the while.

You look over to hers, and she does not stop you.

 _Lalonde, Roxy_  
_2320: 780 CR, 800 M, 740 WR_

In a situation where you’d be gobsmacked with delirious joy, Roxy’s only faintly satisfied with herself.

“Guess I didn’t do too shabby after all,” she says.

“You fucking killed it, Rox,” you reply.

Her cheeks suffuse with a blush at this praise.

The first bell goes off to signal the start of the period. Roxy jumps up, logs out of her workstation, and catches up with Dirk on her way out of the computer lab.  

“See ya 8th, Eridan!” she calls, still happy.

Dirk turns and glances at you with an expression of faint contempt. You return his contempt with your best scowl. Fuck that guy.

It's not that you hate Dirk Strider, exactly. It's that you know the patronizing look of someone who dislikes you based solely on your reputation, and not on the person you really are.

He gazes at you behind those pointy douchebag shades like you're less than the scum gathering on the face of the water in the reservoir across Paul Ave. He thinks that every stupid thing Roxy does, she does because of you.

Which is a fair assumption, to make considering you are a black hole of impulse control issues and consequent bad decisions, but you try to never drag her into them. You are trying to self-destruct, not Roxy-destruct, or anyone else-destruct. You adore her the way you adore Gamz, Vris, Dave, and the rest of your crew. You are all kids groping blindly in the darkness toward the common destination of graduation. If you take any detours on your way there, you're not gonna lead anyone else down those paths.

So fuck that kid twice if he thinks you’re some kind of corrupter.

That aside, it's still hard for you not to hate Dirk, particularly after February, when you had to rescue a dehydrated Roxy, batshit insane, withdrawing from alcohol, and screaming, from her closet. Rose wasn't around because she was spending the week with Kanaya, and Rocy's mom was nowhere to be found.

After that you had to wipe the snot from Roxy's nose nine million times, throw her into the shower, and wash her body yourself because all she was capable of doing was crying.

Seeing her butt fucking naked was the dead antithesis of erotic then, because her heart rate was fifty above temperature, which was a little less than a hundred and you were so scared that she was going to die that you could barely move. You’d seen Cronus go through the DTs, but he had the good sense to start convulsing outright. Roxy didn’t have any grand mal seizures, although she did shake fairly often.

You stood over her like some sentinel for her forty-eight hours of agony.

Dirk would have probably shat his pants at such provocation.

And he was the one who pressured her into quitting drinking, setting the stage for Roxy - who had the analytical mind of a scientist when she saw a problem set but couldn’t apply that rationality to her life - to decide to go cold turkey like a fucking moron. Her methods might not have been his fault, but he was the impetus behind them.

Of course, Roxy made you swear to tell no one of the time she lost control and ranted and raved in the throes of withdrawal.

Therefore Dirk still has no idea how full of brambles and thorns the road toward sobriety was for her, or that she hadn't even bothered to put on shoes before deciding to walk it.

As proud as he is of her resolve to stay dry (or drier) now, you ask yourself, _"at what cost?"_

He says he's her best friend, but he's got no goddamn clue. You're not gonna break your promise to her and break his brain by telling him everything, but shit, sometimes you're sick of the dirty looks that entire group - Jane, Jake, and Dirk - slings in your direction.

He has no idea that his stupid thing with the pretentious bucktoothed kid who talks like he's from the year 1930 constituted the reason Roxy reached first for the bottle before sophomore year started. Wasn’t yet fourteen but still figured out how to make a mean gin and tonic, this girl. Has no idea that she's still painfully hung up on him, as if the sun rises and sets on his pointy glasses of douchebaggery.

And that’s another entry on the list of shit you won't tell him, 'cause you promised a bro you'd say not a goddamned word once again.

You tell yourself that it isn’t that you hate Dirk Strider, but that's exactly what it is. You wish you had the temerity to tell this kid - all muscular from strife and fencing team where you are gangly from drug abuse and the off-season of swim team - to eat shit and die.

You won't, though, because Rox is just like Fef in the sense that seeing two of her dearest friends fighting would break her heart. You've already fucked up one close friendship. You won’t break Roxy’s heart, not if you can help it, at least.

Even if you still shoot up every so often.

Roxy’s vaguely aware of this, but since you keep showing up to school alive and in one piece, she doesn’t worry quite as much. Once in a while, if you're strung out enough while on pesterchum, you can pretend those blindingly pink messages from "tipsyGnostalgic" are actually tyrian purple.

You try not to, though. You try to keep these two girls untangled from each other, to be aware of past, present, and the differences between the two.

You see Fef in the hallways once or twice a week, and even if she waves to you, even though she’s stopped ignoring you, you’re still full of sea-salt tears and the jagged hollow of heartache. You’d try apologizing again, but you wouldn’t know where to start, or where to end.

Roxy sits across from you in 8th period english, her little iPhone concealed by her bright pink binder, and you know she’s paying absolutely no attention to Huck Finn or the discussion. She’s scrolling through some fanfiction site either reading stories about wizards, or updating her own stories about wizards. The girl is truly something else, and it makes you smile.

The week ends, fast forward to the weekend, and you are studying for your two AP exams like your life depends on it. It kind of does.

Every so often, Roxy sends you a message, and you respond. However, you try not to initiate any conversations with her now, close to hell week. She has more than four exams take this year, and you’ll be damned if she fails any of them because you felt like hitting her up one fine Saturday afternoon.

Monday, 7th free, and you sit on Harris Field, tuning your guitar, playing the first few chords of _“Lua”_. It’s not the same with just Jade and Gamz, without Roxy’s vocals lilting, fever-bright, over your accompaniment. Less than three weeks from her AP first exam, she’s almost always scarce now, determined to get straight fives.

Not all hope is lost, though. Gamz can still sing, but he won’t right now since he’s busy lighting a J. Eventually, you just give up. Surrender to the conversation. Talk shit about your least favorite asshole because, in a fucked up way, that makes you happy.

Jade, who is on good terms with both you and Dirk, says he stated earlier this year that he'd sooner run his fencing foil through his own dick than ever hurt Roxy.

“Yeah, well, talk’s cheaper than the swill Vris mixes with her Snapple,” you retort, passing the J to her. It’s a smoking circle (well, triangle, more like) between you, her, and Gamzee. “So I gotta half mind to hand the sword to him and tell him to drop his pants.”

Jade accepts the proffered joint from you and takes one long toke, not responding immediately to what you’ve said. Figures, she’d be a closet stoner even if she’s third in the graduating class grade-wise. Second’s Rox, First’s Captor. It’s gotta be that text color of hers. Only person with a danker shade of green is Kanaya.

“I think we can both agree that when God was handing out brains, he may have skimped a bit as far as Strider and English were concerned,” she says airily and red-eyed, paging through her AP Bio notes.

“Understatement,” Gamzee coughs after inhaling.

You and Jade laugh yourselves silly.

Occasionally, everything’s like this, chill beyond comprehension. In those moments, you can pretend like you lead an almost normal life.

Then, days later, you sit in the bathroom during your lunch period, pants down and scalpel in hand. Taking out the frustrations and disappointments of existence on your thighs. Finally holding the blade to your jugular, though not pressing, and wondering if you’ll actually live long enough to see this college thing that nobody’ll shut the fuck up about.

All reverence to twenty-seven aside, maybe sticking around these next ten years and seeing where life takes you isn’t actually worth it the way you’ve been trying to convince yourself. Maybe seventeen is it.

Maybe your medications won’t ever start to work.

Maybe recovery is a lie they tell people who are too stupid to know otherwise.

You know that nothing in life is certain, but for once, you’d just like someone to tell you, _“Ampora, yeah, you’re a fuckup of the first degree, but it’s gonna be alright.”_

And you’d like to believe it. You’d like to believe there’s something other than hopelessness in your future.

The closest you come to it is sitting next to Roxy in the grass after school, during one of her rare mid-April appearances, listening to that familiar soprano voice while you strum your guitar. Today’s band is Neutral Milk Hotel, which is more Roxy’s thing than yours. Didn’t stop you from trying to learn the chords for this song, despite the fact that you don’t quite have all the progressions down.

You’re sure whoever was in charge of writing the lyrics for this thing was high at the time, because some of these lines make no goddamn sense. Even the title, _“Oh Comely”_ , has not a thing to do with the song.

Roxy sings all the verses, though, even the nonsensical ones. Especially the nonsensical ones.

She goes through the chorus the second time, and you’re so distracted trying to make heads or tails of the words that you barely remember to change chords when she’s done holding that last long note, before the somber bridge begins.

You’re a little late, but it’s the thought that counts.

 _“I know they buried her body with others..._   
_her sister, and mother, and_   
_five hundred families…_  
_And will she remember me fifty years later…?_  
_I wished I could save her in_  
_some sort of time machine…”_

The lyrics are sad, but you aren’t, as you sit, trying to keep up, and let Roxy’s timbre wash over you. In it, you find catharsis and resignation. There are other emotions too, even if you can’t name them immediately.

“You and Jade, you two spoil me,” she insists to you later.

You laugh.

“It’s because you sound so beautiful, Rox.”

She gives you a smile that quavers on the verge of a grimace in response.

“Thank you,” she replies, voice thicker than it should be.

You can feel the storm brewing. Ever since she realized she had less than a month to live before the first exam, Roxy’s been acting tense.

You think of when you first got your guitar, and the time you turned a peg so far that a string nearly snapped. That’s where she is, at that overwrought edge. So when she bursts into tears, you’re not even slightly surprised.

You just hold her while she hyperventilates and sobs about the six AP exams she has to take this year. _Six? Jesus fucking Christ. Who the hell approved her schedule, Satan?_

She counts them up for you. Chem, Physics B, Calculus BC, English Lang and Comp, US History, and Computer Science. She can’t remember the last time she went to sleep without having nightmares of imminent failure.

“Wanna drink so bad, but I know it’s no good,” she says. “Ain’t gonna help me get fives.”

“Yeah,” you agree.

She manages to steady herself after a few deep breaths.

“I’m sorry for cryin’,” she says, wiping her eyes. “I’m just so tired.”

“S okay, it’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.”

She’s fucking brilliant. She’ll get through them even if you have to drag her to and from the examination rooms yourself. Jade, who has four to take but always had a cooler head than Roxy, makes a similar promise.

“We’ll all pull through,” she says in that usual confident Jade tone. “I have never known us not to.”

You wish you could be as sure as Jade, cucumber cool in the face of impending doom.

People gossip, as they are wont to do when their own lives are awful, this week’s barrage of bullshit consisting of people wondering aloud who you had to blow to be in two APs when your overall average is pretty awful.

Fuck. That. Noise.

Yeah, you’re a fuckup who cuts class the way some people breathe. Yeah, you’re a fuckup who cuts yourself at the slightest provocation. Yeah, you’re a fuckup and you prefer your acoustic piece of shit and your clandestine needles to pretty much everyone but Harris Crew. That doesn’t make you a brain dead moron, though. You only use clean syringes. You have a 96 in English and a 91 in US. Although you’re no Rox Lalonde, you did okay on the SAT. In short, you are not a goddamn slouch, overall be damned.

You might be a self-destructive asshole, but you try to keep acting as if your life will start meaning something again. You go through the motions. You sit through weekly therapy, tight-lipped about your drug use, but speaking freely about everything else.

Once a month, you see the meds shrink, and she tells you how you have to give these drugs time to work.

Yeah, yeah, yet another bunch of horseshit from authority figures. You’re used to it. In the meantime, you have other drugs that work, even if you don’t say anything about them.

Tentatively, your treatment team diagnoses you with something called Borderline personality disorder, and unlike your other Dx, Major depression, which was self explanatory, this one’s confusing.

_What the fuck? The borderline of what?_

Whatever.

Ten days before the start of exams, you decide you might as well go to detention for once. It’s a reasonably quiet place to study, and you have like fifteen outstanding. There, you sit beside Aradia Megido, who - despite having kicked Vriska ass into a different zipcode back in freshman year - is actually not that terrifying.

Much to the consternation of her body guard slash stalker, Equius, she’s got nineteen detentions to serve with what he calls the “truant drug users”. Only person in your graduating class who’s more of a pompous jackass, and that is Dirk Strider.

Aradia, though, she’s not bad at all. You grew up with her. Her and a few others.

She’s a reasonably attractive chick in a red hijab, who’s been watching the relationship between her boyfriend and your ex-best friend unfold with interest, as she tells you after you raise the question.

“So you really don’t mind that Sol's cheatin’ on you?” you ask her in response.

“We have an open relationship,” she says, with a faint smile, as if she’s stated the most obvious thing in the world.

Yeah, okay. Fair enough. Whatever works.

Aradia sits there highlighting lines in the DSM-IV-TR like it’s a bit of light reading, and you ask her about that too. You ask her a lot of questions, ones you half-expect her to refuse to answer, but she never does. She’s always forthright.

So she explains that it’s because someone close to her has bipolar disorder, and they were hospitalized recently for a suicide attempt.

It’s not difficult to figure out who, since according to Roxy, Sollux hasn’t been in class since the week before last. When you asked Roxy why, she got cagey and evasive, saying that he’d be back before the end of the month, before the start of hell week.

It’s the lispmaster, it’s gotta be.

Maybe it’s just because you’ve found someone new to despise in Dirk. Maybe it’s just because it’s getting boring hating Captor for being what you couldn’t be to Feferi.  Maybe it’s ‘cause you know what it’s like to want to stop existing, and you wouldn’t wish it on anyone else.

Either way. You desire for him him no ill will, not anymore.

“When you see ‘im later, Sol I mean,” you murmur, trying to keep your voice down so you don’t arouse the attention of the dean presiding over detention. “Tell ‘im I know what it’s like being in the slammer for that kinda thing, and I hope he feels better and shit. I mean I know that prolly ain’t worth jack ‘cause he hates my fuckin’ guts, and rightfully so, but still… send him my regards or some shit.”

You guess this must be growing up. Or being strung out. Something of the sort.

Aradia regards you with a warm gaze that could melt snow, and gives you an approving nod. “I’ll tell him, Eridan. I surely will.”

Ten, fifteen minutes go by. Then you remember something that’s been eating you ever since you saw your shrink last.

“Hey, Megs,” you whisper, trying to get her attention again.

She turns to you.

“Yeah, Eridan?”

“Can I borrow that book of yours for a sec? The DSM thing?”

There’s at least an hour left in detention. Plenty of time for you to find what you’re looking for.

She passes it to you with a murmured _“certainly!”_

You page through the stupidly long tome until you locate the section dedicated to personality disorders. Then, you search through that section until you see, _“Diagnostic criteria for 301.83 Borderline Personality Disorder”_ at the top of one of the pages.

_“A pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:_

  1. _(1) frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. Note: Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in Criterion 5._
  2. _(2) a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation_
  3. _(3) identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self_
  4. _(4) impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, Substance Abuse, reckless driving, binge eating). Note: Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in Criterion 5._
  5. _(5) recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior_
  6. _(6) affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)_
  7. _(7) chronic feelings of emptiness_
  8. _(8) inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)_
  9. _(9) transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.”_



You start tallying them up.

One’s a given, probably your greatest weakness, that fucking “don’t leave me” directive that kicks into overdrive at the thought of one of your friends outgrowing you. What you did to Fef sounds stupid now, trying to kill yourself because of her thing with Captor, but back then it seemed like the only rational option.

You make a small star next to the first criterion in pencil.

“Sorry for messin’ up your book,” you tell Aradia, and it’s somewhat belated apology.

“Oh no, it’s fine!” she insists.

In spite of yourself, you’re starting to take a liking to this girl.

You return to your counting and scrutiny after thanking her.

Two is somewhat true, although you’ve been reining in the urges to see someone as either your savior or a demon sent by Satan to fuck your shit up. Still a thing you do, though. Roxy is the soft shimmer of moonlight personified and Dirk is the Devil. Another star.

Three, not really. You’re fairly sure of who you are. You hate who you are, but you know your reflection when you see it in the mirror, when you see the scars on your thighs. You leave that one without a star to accompany it.

Four is a way of life for you. You may, in fact, be an expert in dealing with everything in this manner. Star number three next to that.

Five, yeah, as much as it pains you to admit it. Another way of life. Star number four.

Six, sort-of, but having seen Captor’s legendary mood swings, you’re aware your shit is nowhere near as bad as it could be. Tentative star next to that, star five.

Seven. Well, seven seems like the logical conclusion to feeling things as intensely as you do. To being as sad and hopeless as you have been. The emptiness, the clawing emptiness haunts you like a ghost. Star number six.

Eight. You don’t really have anger problems, unless it’s all anger turned inward that finally pops up as intense self-loathing. You’re not sure if that counts, though, so no star with that one.

Nine. You worry constantly that the people you call friends actually hate your guts, check. You’re not sure what “dissociative” means, but you’ve heard Kar and Rox use the term before, and as far as you can tell, it’s equivalent to what you like to call “checking out”. Momentarily losing yourself and your emotions, letting everything clock down to zero, because reality’s too excruciatingly painful. You never thought it was a bad thing, though. Star seven.

Five to have the disorder, and you’ve got seven. Out of nine. According to your TI-84, that’s 78%, which you’re certain is higher than your GPA. Even if you neglect the criteria that you only “kind of” meet, there’s still five that you have spot on. Well, then.

Eridan Ampora, you are certifiably insane, sleep deprived, and comprised of little more than a collection of numbers.

_We hold these truths to be self-evident, that we were only ever points on goddamn scattergrams in Naviance._

That quip goes deeper than you thought.

Fives, and sevens, and three-oh-one-point-eighty-three to sum it up. A twenty-one-fifty here, and a seventy-six-point-forty-seven there. One-twenty-two-nineteen-ninety-three as a point of origin. So much can be summed up in digits and the undeniable truths they come together to form.

_Who are you, really?_

You remember Catholic school ten thousand years ago, and a psalm from the crucifix. You can’t remember the exact chapter or even its context, although the verse itself comes back to you like an old friend.

_“They have dug my hands and feet. They have numbered all my bones. And they have looked and stared upon me.”_

Your bones are more numbered than your days, with exams hanging over you like a specter.

Your mind, your statistics, your drive, your worth, your value, all of it can be quantified. You think of Maryam the older, the nursing student, with her numbered chart of the skeletal system. Even there.

It’s probably all the sleep you haven’t been getting, but everything makes sense to you now.

You erase the stars you made in Aradia’s book and slide it back to her. She smiles once more, mouthing the phrase _“good luck”_ to you.

You mouth it back.

Poor you. Poor Sollux. All you mad numbered boys who can’t handle living.

When he returns to class that next week, Sollux is whey-faced and bewildered and somehow thinner than he already was. Hospital fare must not have agreed with him, since now he’s truly a goddamn walking, lisping skeleton.

You expect him to flip you off in homeroom on that first day back, but he doesn’t. He nods at you, something like a sarcastic half-smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He still hooks an arm around Fef’s waist, but not in an in-your-face _“fuck you, Eridan”_ sort of way.

He catches you at the end of homeroom, before third starts, and tells you that Aradia gave him your message.

“Yeah, well,” you say all mild and trying to keep it chill even though this is the nicest you’ve seen this dude in your entire life.

You’re a little scared. If he hugs you, you’ll keel over dead of shock.

“I wath altho informed by the blonde who’th in four of my claththeth, who gave me all of the homework and AP exam review sheets thethe latht eighteen dayth,” Sollux continues, “that you were inthtrumental in keeping her alive while she tried to quit boozing it all up.”

“I guess, man,” you say to him.

Of course Roxy would tell him you saved her ass. Which wasn’t saving so much as watching, really.

“And FF told me not to be crothth with you for thingth you may have done to her in the patht,” he goes on.

“Cool.”

You still have no idea where this conversation is going, and this kid still isn't done talking yet.

“Which ith to thay that you are not the horrendouth pile of dickth I may have onthe believed you were.” Sollux extends one bony hand. “Truthe, ED?”

Whatever you thought was going to happen in eleventh grade, this was not on the list. Not by a long shot.

And you shake on it, remembering what Kar said about Sollux, that he doesn’t give those stupid two letter nicknames unless he doesn’t think you’re a waste of space.  

“Truce, Sollux.”

When you tell Roxy about this development during English, she nearly slides out of her seat.

_"Really?"_

"Yeah, really," you reply, and you're still as shocked as she is. "I dunno, man, maybe he's just gone completely outta his mind. Wouldn't be the first time."


End file.
